Elearnspace

Digitization is deceptive in that the deep impact isn’t readily observable. Remember when MOOCs were going to transform higher education? Or when personalized learning was going to do away with instructors? Going back about a century ago, audio, then video, was also going to disrupt education. All of these trends have been window dressing – a facade more reflective of the interests of those who advocate for them rather than a substantive departure from established norms.

After about a year of planning, we can finally announce the following courses on edX focusing on learning analytics. The intent of these courses is to eventually lead into a MicroMasters and then advance placement in an in-development Masters of Science in Learning Analytics at UTA. Each course runs about three weeks and we’ve tried to settle on prominent analytics tools for educational data so the experience is one where skills can immediately be applied.

In about a month, David Wiley and I are teaching this course on edX: Introduction to Open Education. As we are both firm adherents to social and participatory pedagogical models (i.e. we like it when others do our work), we need some help. Specifically, we’d love to have faculty/researchers/practitioners provide short 3-5 minute reflections on one or more of the following topics:

In fall, I’ll be running a course on edX with a few colleagues on Digitizing Higher Education. This course is part of a larger initiative that I’ll be rolling out later this month focused on helping universities transition into digital systems: University Networks.
Here’s the pitch:

When we started the learning analytics conference in 2011, we aligned with ACM. We received a fair bit of criticism for not pursuing fully open proceedings. Some came from our sister organization, IEDMS, that has open proceedings. We made a difficult choice to go with the traditional route of quality, indexed proceedings, largely in order to ensure that colleagues from Europe and Latin America could receive funds for their travels.

I’m exploring what it means to be human in a digital age and what role universities play in developing learners for this experience. Against the backdrop of everything is changing, we aren’t paying enough attention to what we are becoming. The Becoming is the central role of education in a machine learning, artificial intelligence era. It’s great to see people like Michael Wesch exploring the formative aspect of education.

Some variation of adaptive or personalized learning is rumoured to “disrupt” education in the near future. Adaptive courseware providers have received extensive funding and this emerging marketplace has been referred to as the “holy grail” of education (Jose Ferreira at an EdTech Innovation conference that I hosted in Calgary in 2013). The prospects are tantalizing: each student receiving personal guidance (from software) about what she should learn next and support provided (by the teacher) when warranted.

Athabasca University has the benefit of offering one of the first doctor of education programs, fully online, in North America. The program is cohort-based and accepts 12 students annually. I’ve been teaching in the doctorate program for several years (Advanced Research Methods as well as, occasionally, Teaching & Learning in DE) and supervise 8 (?!) doctoral students currently.

As part of the Digital Learning Research Network, we held our first conference at Stanford last year.
The conference focused on making sense of higher education. The discussions and prsentations addressed many of the critical challenges faced by learners, educators, administrators, and others. The schedule and archive are available here.

Over the past year, I’ve been whining about how wearable technologies will have a bigger impact on how we learn, communicate, and function as a society than mobile devices have had to date. Fitness trackers, smart clothing, VR, heart rate monitors, and other devices hold promising potential in helping understand our learning and our health. They also hold potential for misuse (I don’t know the details behind this, but the connection between affective states with nudges for product purchases is troubling).